As a side note : Yes, you don't see Germany there. Yes, it's that bad … I'm not joking.

-- “ Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the opposite direction.“ (E.F.Schumacher, Economist, Source)

Originally Posted by Gorath
Most rural areas in Germany are still stuck with no DSL or slow DSL (<3Mbits). The price is always the same though: 25-50€ for a flat rate, often with phone.

I wish — my parents are still running at ISDN (7 kb/sec) with no flat rate available whatsoever; they have to pay per minute (!). I mean, how smegged up is that?

Originally they were supposed to get DSL about 12 years ago. Work was finally begun this year to get the village connected with optical fiber cable. Was supposed to be finished by Christmas but progress was interrupted by some nature guys who wanted to protect one or two trees.

Personally I'm sitting right next to a VDSL switch site and could get 50 Mbps, but since it's owned by the Telekom and I'm with another provider, I only get ~10 max out of "up to 16 Mbps" I pay for.

-- "Mystery is important. To know everything, to know the whole truth, is dull. There is no magic in that. Magic is not knowing, magic is wondering about what and how and where." ~ Cortez, from The Longest Journey

Originally Posted by lostforever
what is the reason for the high prices in US? not enough competition between providers?

That's it mostly. You're looking at an infrastructure installation pretty much anywhere you go (which also contributes to the high cost), so the providers tend to create "exclusive service areas" by not overlapping their installations much.

Dang Google Fiber adds have been hitting me every time I watch a YouTube video. Upgrade to Gigabit speed! Check the website… nope. Not in your area yet, check back later. It's been that way for over a year now. This is cruel and unusual!

No sympathy shall ye get. They put in fiber to the west of me to connect the county school and university. Campus is like 1/4 mile from my house. They put in fiber to the east of me to connect the city school and industrial park. That's maybe 5 miles. They've been "planning" to tie in the residential region in between for a year now. Oh no, I'll just enjoy my 3MB DSL line that drops to maybe 1MB after working hours due to excessive loading. Grrr.

Well another piece of the price pie is coverage. How hard is it to cover a little bitty country like South Korea versus the massive United States? Everybody has to pay the piper so that Joe Blow in the boondocks can have internet Europeans that have not traveled extensively in the United States have no idea how large this country is. We are 96 times larger than South Korea. That's a lot of infrastructure

Well another piece of the price pie is coverage. How hard is it to cover a little bitty country like South Korea versus the massive United States? Everybody has to pay the piper so that Joe Blow in the boondocks can have internet Europeans that have not traveled extensively in the United States have no idea how large this country is. We are 96 times larger than South Korea. That's a lot of infrastructure

That's nothing but an excuse even if it's true. It still doesn't explain the lack of competition, high prices, and false advertising that is going on right now.

Nut, just to put your comment in perspective, Oz is as large as the US, with a fraction of the number of people, yet while needing the same amount of infrastructure to cover the land mass, we have FAR fewer people to pay for it (22 million) yet our costs are similar to your I believe.

How does bandwidth usage figure into this? I keep hearing Europeans complaining about how some patch showed up on Steam and blew them past their download caps. I don't really know how high the caps are, though, or what the penalty is for going over them.

Originally Posted by Corwin
Nut, just to put your comment in perspective, Oz is as large as the US, with a fraction of the number of people, yet while needing the same amount of infrastructure to cover the land mass, we have FAR fewer people to pay for it (22 million) yet our costs are similar to your I believe.

Not even close, Corwin Here is a good way to compare infrastructure. Most every place that has internet will also have electricity and roads. While Australia is about 4/5ths the size of the US, it doesn't have anywhere near the infrastructure. Australia has 810,624 km of roads to cover the places where people live. The USA has 6,341,421 km of roads. Vastly more infrastructure because of vastly higher population. The same is true with the internet, mostly. Satellite versions of internet access truly mess with my scenario though